September monthly goal meet-up
September 2, 2009 | Filed under Career, The Real World
Following my very cliché quarter-life crisis post, I realized that in order to feel good about my life I have to be continually setting goals for myself and working toward them. Achieving goals once in a while is great too, but what really gets me out of bed every morning is just the fact that there are thing to do.
I was inspired to track some of my goals here on my blog after seeing Rebecca Thorman do the same over at Modite earlier tonight (check out her post for the “rules”). I think it’s a great idea to establish and track goals in a such a public forum. I’m not a To-Do List person at all, but I like this concept a lot.
To start this on the right foot, here are some goals I had for August – some of which I accomplished and some I didn’t:
- Negotiate for a raise so I can move back to the city and not have to live in a cardboard box
- Go to the gym 3 times a week (I left my gym shoes in my cousin’s car and I haven’t seen her again yet, so…)
- Get a new cell phone and get on a plan instead of doing “pay as you go” (got a BlackBerry!)
- Start looking for an apartment for October 1st (found a cheap apartment in a good neighbourhood for September 1st, but with half price rent for September – score!)
- Go to Montréal to visit family (this is long overdue, but it had to be postponed because I can’t afford rent and such an expensive trip at the same time)
Life and career goals for September:
- Move into the new apartment, get all nest-y and finish painting over Labour Day weekend
- Go to the beach a few times before winter sets it since I live right on it now – I already took my first early-morning beach walk last weekend when I crashed at the empty apartment to begin cleaning and painting
- Get the Internet at home (!!!)
- Throw a house-warming party
- Hire an intern to help me with all the insanity at work
- Actually trust said intern enough to delegate tasks to him/her
Tags: change, goals, moving, perfectionism, TalentEgg, Toronto
Let the ritual begin
August 31, 2009 | Filed under Post-grad, The Real World
I’ve had a really hard time blogging this summer because I’ve been in limbo and I hate being in limbo. It’s tough to be inspired when I’m not moving forward. Hell, it’s tough to be inspired when I don’t leave the house for days on end.
Also, I don’t like blogging about how much I hate parts of my life. I did that for years as a teenager, and while I still have plenty of teenage angst inside of me at age 23, I stopped writing in my livejournal for a reason. I used to feel better when I spilled out all my negativity into a space like that, but now it just makes me feel worse. If I don’t write it down, then I can just forget about it.
But now, things are starting to move again. I’m moving again, literally. I got a cute one bedroom in The Beaches and although it requires a lot of TLC, it’s worth it. It’s cheap and it’s small, but it’s just me so it’s a good size. The lake, the beach and the boardwalk are one block away. The neighbourhood is full of families and dogs and ridiculously in shape people who all seem very relaxed because they live by the water. I like it.
I took it even though I promised myself I wouldn’t paint another apartment for a long time, and even though it needed to be cleaned from top to bottom. I’m tired of painting and the walls in particular were unbelievably dirty.
But as I scrubbed the walls of their grime and wiped away the cobwebs, I realized it’s a good experience to go through. It’s like a ritual that allows me to see every centimeter of my new home up close and personal. I’m a nester by nature, so painting everything the colours I love and putting my things just so are very important to me.
And I’ve moved so many times that it takes such a ritual for a space to feel like home. This will be my 13th move and more than half of those were just in the last five years. It took me along time to allow any place feel like home because home always meant my mom was there, and she wasn’t. She wasn’t anywhere. But I’ve come to terms with that now.
So, I move in next weekend. And I will have a life again, with friends and actually going into work every day and living in a city that is a living entity all on its own.
I think this means I can write again. Thank goodness.
Tags: blogging, Cambridge, change, emotional breakdown, Mom, moving, whining
Oh no, I feel a quarter-life crisis coming on. Crap!
July 19, 2009 | Filed under Randomness
Despite appearing to be really good at patting myself on the back for a job well done, I seem to be going through one of those pesky quarter-life crises.
I assumed I would avoid it altogether because I nabbed an awesome job straight out of school, but the truth is now that I’m all settled in I’m starting to think, “Now what?”
Not so much in terms of my job – I have more than enough to do and the company has a The Sky’s the Limit mentality – but in terms of my life. Until about three months ago, I was working toward some very important milestones in my life. I had full control. I knew if I did A and B I would eventually get to C.
OK. So I got to C. But now I’m panicking a little bit because there are no prescribed steps to take to get to another place in life. I could potentially do anything, so I’m left feeling a bit paralyzed and I do nothing instead.
Except when I’ve had a few drinks and the paralysis melts away and I feel like I can actually do anything, so I do, but I don’t think about the consequences first. And when that feeling finally returns I find myself even more “stuck” because I’m embarassed for losing control, for being irresponsible, for appearing unprofessional. Sometimes I don’t even need a few drinks; I just feel a bit sassy and try to get away with things I never even would have thought about doing, say, a year ago.
Where there used to be clear paths to follow and distinct lines drawn in the sand never to cross, there seems to now be only greyness and uncertainty. Not to be over-dramatic, but in certain situations I find myself having a hard time telling the difference between right and wrong. I often ask friends and family for advice, but none of them seem to know the answers either.
So, here I am, a little confused, mucking things up … putting some things away which have been bothering me for a while and digging up new ones.
I known I need to set goals for myself and work toward them, but I have no idea what those goals should be. I know I want to move back to Toronto, but I have no idea when the right time should be or how much of my debt I should pay off before devoting nearly half of my income to rent. I know I want to meet new people and maybe even date some of them casually, but I have no idea where these people are or how to meet them.
This all sounds very vague, I know. But it’s kind of how I feel right now. Vague. Bleh.
Tags: career path, emotional breakdown, goals, moving, perfectionism, TalentEgg, workaholic
Funemployment ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, mainstream media
July 14, 2009 | Filed under Generation Y
The hottest buzzword surrounding Gen Y in Canadian media this summer has to be “funemployed.” That is, choosing to be unemployed to do things they’ve always wanted to do, such as travel, pursue hobbies and, if the mainstream media would have you believe it, move back in with Mom and Dad to have a riotous time sitting on the couch and watching TV all day.
These articles paint twentysomething students and recent grads, and even unemployed workers in their mid-to-late 30s, as idealistic slackers without a care in the world who – for a time – surf couches, take odd jobs and, God forbid, actually feel optimistic about the future while they’re doing it.
Indeed, the trend is spurred on by changing attitudes towards work, says Karyn Gordon, a workplace and youth consultant. Young people today are less likely to see work as their raison d’être. They are happier to stay jobless because they don’t base their self worth on their job, Dr. Gordon says. [The Globe and Mail]
While this is generally true, many of us still long for a life-long career we are happy in. Unlike our parents’ and grandparents’ generations, who often stayed at one job or only a couple similar jobs their whole lives, perhaps it’s not the individual jobs that make up an important part of who we are. After all, we’re likely to change jobs at least a dozen or so times in our lifetime. But I think a meaningful career that progresses steadily from Point A to B to C, etc. is still important to Gen Y. We want to know our dedication and hard work is paying off in the long run.
Although I usually favour the Globe over other Canadian publications, its article on this topic doesn’t hold up to the paper’s normally high standards. It focuses on Gen Y’s stereotypical Peter Pan-ishness (however, most of the sources in this article are in their 30s for some reason) and doesn’t acknowledge the fact that young people currently have a lot of competition for jobs due to the recession, and there is also currently more reliance on short-term contract work which might leave people unemployed, then employed and then un/underemployed again.
Now, aside from the fact that I know more people who are working hard (or at least working hard at trying to get a job so they can work hard) than not, in previous generations the “funemployed” were simply free spirits who needed a little extra time to “find themselves.” Weren’t they? I don’t think this is something new nor do I think the funemployed should define our entire generation.
In the more recent Maclean’s article on the same topic, I think the reality of Gen Y not being able to find meaningful work and pursuing other valid options is more accurately represented. For example:
- realizing it’s a tough time to look for a career-advancing job and working a service job to finance a vacation before taking international internships abroad;
- getting laid off and living on the severance package while keeping an ear to the ground until another meaningful opportunity presents itself;
- working on hobbies and projects that make you happy, such as art, music or blogging, which can also help with networking and preventing the isolation that typically occurs when someone is unemployed.
Although the article is still peppered with a few Gen Y stereotypes, it’s much more kind than the other. And as for our generation being more accepted of unemployment than previous generations, let’s just say we realize there are different paths we can take along the journey toward a fulfilling career. Sometimes it includes travel (for business or for pleasure), or exploring different interests, or just being unemployed for a while because it can be tough to find a job.
And it’s OK!
(However, I have to mention that I think time off should include something that is potentially relevant to your career path, such as volunteering/unpaid internships or creating work for yourself through some sort of project or even just a blog.)
Tags: "real" jobs, bias, Gen Y, media, newspaper industry, observations, university
Mission accomplished
June 23, 2009 | Filed under Career
I promised myself I would blog more often once I finished school because I wouldn’t be working the equivalent of two full-time jobs (just one), but I’ve still managed to keep myself surprisingly busy.
The only huge news I have is that my face was on the “front page” of GlobeandMail.com on Friday! And not for some random reason, but because I wrote something that The Globe and Mail published on their GlobeCampus site. That’s huge, right?
TalentEgg recently partnered with GlobeCampus for a blog/column called From Class to Career. Lauren’s article went up early last week and mine, “It’s been two months since graduating … now what?”
Needless to say, it’s a very exciting (or eggciting as Lauren would say) time for TalentEgg and for me personally/professionally. Already this year I’ve been published in the National Post multiple times and now something I wrote was featured on the Globe and Mail’s homepage. Two national newspapers in the span of a few months. Not bad!
You don’t have to be hired by a media giant to be published by one!
Tags: career path, National Post, newspaper industry, published, TalentEgg, workaholic
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